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Title = California Businesses for Sale at BusinessBroker.net - California Business for Sale

While the page titles and meta data are a bit different, the bulk of the page content (which is the listings rendered) are identical. We were wondering if it would make good sense to either (A) 301 redirect Versions 2 and 3 to the preferred Version 1 page or (B) put Canonical Tags on Versions 2 and 3 labeling Version 1 as the preferred version. We have this issue for all 50 U.S. States -- I've mentioned California here but the same applies for Alabama through Wyoming - same issue.

Given that there are 3 different flavors and all are showing up in the Search Results -- some on the same 1st page of results -- which probably is a good thing for now -- should we do a 301 redirect or a Canonical Tag on Versions 2 and 3? Seems like with Google cracking down on duplicate content, it might be wise to be proactive.

I looked at version 1 through 3 for California and agree that these pages are substantially similar.

If this was my site I would eliminate version 2 and version 3 and put all of my linkjuice into version 1.

I would not do this without some analytics... and might try an experiment with a couple of states before doing it across the site. However, my bet is that one version will pull about as much traffic as all three versions combined.

Thanks for the quick response -- quick question - when you say "eliminate" do you mean to 301 redirect these pages? These are all existing pages that are indexed by Google and have various search positions. Thanks again.

Hello, you provided a very good response to the question I posed last year. We never pulled the trigger on this change and now it is back on the radar screen. I was hoping you'd be willing to answer a follow-up question for us. Does it matter which version is getting ranked the best in the eyes of Google in terms of which URL's we chose to 301? I started to look at where we rank for certain "state" related keywords -- i.e. Utah Businesses for Sale, etc.. If we 301 a version that is getting ranked well in Google, does this hurt us in any way? For example, if we decide to 301 redirect Version 3 (http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml) to this page -- http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx - if Version 3 ranks well for keywords like California Business for Sale, etc..

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